Abstract

Re-engineering the product introduction process (PIP) can lead to significant reductions in cost and time to market. However the costs of analysing and reengineering the process for complex products deters many companies from attempting to re-engineer all of their detailed component level processes. One way to improve the efficiency with which business processes are re-engineered is to develop templates that assist in their definition from first principles. This paper proposes a template: that has been derived from the study of a number of detailed component level process descriptions by looking for commonality between them. The paper describes the method used in the derivation of the template. It outlines the proposed template, which can be used to create the process definition from concept design of a component to its manufacture and relates process to component functionality in a generic way that avoids component-specific terminology.